JTextArea is hiding drop downs....

I have a JTextArea, a couple of JComboBoxes, and a JDateChooser in a FormLayout on one of my application tabs. Whenever I choose a date on the JDateChooser the dropdowns from the JComboBoxes or Date Chooser are hidden behind the JTextArea until I switch tabs. Has anyone else experienced this problem, and if so how do I go about fixing it?

The relevant code is below containing the JDateChooser, a couple other fields, and the comments JTextArea:

Re: JTextArea is hiding drop downs....

I actually found my own work-around just so everyone knows. instead of using a JTextArea I replaced it with a JEditorPane and encapsulated it with a JScrollPane. This is not a fix for the issue with JTextArea but it works around the problem. The JEditor Pane does not hide any of the drop-downs.